To ask why you gave DC his last name?

[Tsort]

If you kept your name/aren’t married, but gave DC their father’s last name (as opposed to double barrelling or giving them you own), may I ask why?

Because my surname is my father's.My farther was a very abusive and absent parent whose surname I did not want.Also I happen to want to have a family surname.Whatever it might be.I happen to like my husbands surname.So if I kept mine for ' feminist ' reasons I would be going against what I actually want.Hence ' cutting my nose to spite my face' comment.

See this is my point...

Your surname is yours not your fathers. Men don't own names. It's as much yours as it it his.

By your way of thinking you've taken your father in laws name ....

Why is it your husband's name is his but you consider your own name your father's?

There's the rub. Do you not see it?

Its internalised.

F me you are so set of the Feminist dogma that you have lost the train though of normal people. My father's family side and he has my surname.I always wanted to distance myself from them and not associate with that part of the family .Changing surname was a big part of that.Is it really so hard to understand that?

1 Convenience when travelling abroad. I figured (rightly or wrongly) that people will assume a woman travelling alone with kids is their mum and has the right to travel with them, whereas a man travelling alone with kids might not have the right to take them out of the country. As it turned out, no one has ever questioned any of us about whether we were a family, so I was probably overthinking things!

2 The kids' names were important to my in-laws and not important to me, so I thought I might as well humour them on this, given that I didn't plan to budge an inch on anything else regarding the upbringing of their grandchildren! It did please grandma, so that was a win.

Compromised, discussed it like adults?

oh, and double-barrelling wasn't an option because my surname is enormous. My kids would have hated us every time they filled in a form!

Yeah DH was ok about it, I think he would have preferred to keep his name but only because of the extra admin and faff of changing names.

My mum thought it was 'weird' and that 'the baby will get bullied' Literally no idea why. I told her people will assume DHs name is the name we all have, because you know, patriarchy. I think they never even considered we would do this and it blew their minds a bit. Sad really.

Because he needed a surname and I really didn't care which one it was? I dislike double barrelled so both wasn't an option. I kept my name when we got married so different to DH and DS - nobody has ever cared even a little bit.

No it isn’t. Women’s rights and equality aren’t elevated by your children having the same last name as you.

A friend of mine didn't change her name on marriage, they had a son first which has husbands name and then she had a daughter - she wanted the daughter to have her own last name as she thought it would be nice to carry on the separate also names that way. Unfortunately her husband didn't agree and got funny about it so she let him have his way. I thought it was an interesting idea (I'm really boring and changed my last name when I got married)

I don't have my fathers surname and I thought that it might be a bit strange for the kids to have their great grandfathers surname rather than their own actual fathers. Part of me wishes I'd double barrelled but the names didn't roll together well and mine is a pain to spell. Plus his went better with more first names. It mattered to him and didn't matter to me as I knew they were mine.

My surname is awful and his is nice. Both too long to double barrel and had vague plans to marry eventually anyway. Wedding now booked. Am actually undecided as to whether to change my name or not though.

I've lost the train of thought of normal people because I've pointed out that your husband's name is his father's as much as yours was your father's? More like I've touched a nerve.

I completely understand not wanting to associate with an abuser but don't understand why so many women only claim this on marriage. Presumably if it's that much of a trigger they would want to distance themselves as soon as they are legally able to and not wait until they get married. Just odd.

It's also telling that men too have terrible childhoods and awful relationships with their fathers and yet don't rush to change their name on marriage.......funny how it's just women.

Well, my SIL did it because if she hadn’t DB’s family name would have died out. She has brothers to continue hers, my DB doesn’t and I have no children either. I thought it was lovely of her actually.

Do you ask men that question when they keep their last names?

So, your last name was your father’s, but your husband’s belongs to him? Why?

All the people going ‘it mattered to him, but not to me’ then claiming there is no internalised misogyny at play…erm, what?

Why did it matter to him, but not you? And why is this a recurrent theme? Have you genuinely never thought about this?

Interestingly (and I know you can't extrapolate) but the only person I know who was stopped IRL going abroad was my step dad. He had his DC with him, and they all share a surname. But they thought he might be kidnapping them. Purely because he was a man.

Did you just start this thread to get people justifying a decision you wouldn’t agree with so you could bash them for it?

I haven’t ‘bashed’ anyone, at any point. If you consider being asked if you’ve thought about your motivations to be an attack, that’s on you.

Because we live in my husband's country and my last name is difficult to spell and pronounce here. Everyone gets it wrong. I live with it because it's been my name for nearly 4 decades, but I wouldn't lumber a baby with it.

My son has a variation on my surname as his first name though, e.g. my surname Johnson, his first name John.

How very odd. Do you remember what country they were stopped leaving/entering?

Off topic, but my sister in law is white, my niece is mixed race and I’m Black. Apparently, SIL gets stopped and robustly questioned at airports when she travels alone with DN. Never happens when DB or I are also travelling.

I think it can be hard for progressive feminist women to admit they have made a completely non-feminist choice and have gone with the status quo. I’ll put my hand up and admit to it…. I have kept my maiden name but all the children have DH’s surname, because that’s the societal norm and I wasn’t brave enough to battle bucking the trend. However, I was very VERY clear with DH that if the children got his surname, then the other names were predominantly my choice (within reason - I wouldn’t have picked something he couldn’t stand). I gave them middle names that were meaningful to me, and had more sway over the first name.

When we got married I said he was free to take my name or we could both double barrel. I wouldn't double barrel unless he did.

With our children said same. Our whole family is now double-barreled and it means a lot to me that he did that.

My children are actually the last of my surname so it was important to me. Also because I'm the one pushing them out!!

They are far more than anyone subscribing to an outdated patriarchal tradition where women were owned as property.